Syrian Boy Who Became Image of Civil War Reappears

A young Syrian boy who captured the world’s attention last year when images of his blood- and dust-covered face spread across the internet has been recast this week to bolster the Syrian government’s cause in a series of television interviews.

The boy, Omran Daqneesh, came to symbolize the plight of civilians besieged by government forces in eastern Aleppo when his family’s home was bombed in August and local activists shared photos and video of the frightened Omran on social media.

Now, he and his family have appeared on news channels supportive of President Bashar al-Assad, apparently part of a calculated public relations campaign by the Syrian government.

These are the first images of Omran — his cheeks pudgier, his face cleaner — that have been broadcast since he was rescued by volunteer emergency workers. At the time, his family had refused to speak to the news media.

Interview with the father of Omran Daqneesh broadcast by the Russian news outlet Ruptly. CreditVideo by Ruptly TV

The latest interviews appear on outlets that favor the Syrian government: Russian-, Iranian- and Lebanese-run state television, and on Syrian channels that have backed Mr. Assad in his six-year war against opposition forces.

In an interview with the Russian outlet Ruptly, Omran turns to the camera and tells the interviewer hesitantly: “I am Omran Daqneesh. I am 4 years old.”

Initial information from activists in Syria had indicated that Omran was 5 at the time of the attack, illustrating how difficult it has been to verify the facts of his story.

Omran’s father, Mohamad Kheir Daqneesh, said in an interview on Iranian state TV that he feared for his son’s safety after the first images spread across the internet.

“I changed Omran’s name so no one will know him, and I changed his haircut, so no one will film him or recognize him,” Mr. Daqneesh told Hosein Mortada, a journalist with Iran’s Al-Alam News.

In the clip, Omran’s once shaggy hair is cropped.

After the violence of the Syrian civil war reached Aleppo in 2012 and divided the city, the Daqneesh family stayed in rebel-held eastern Aleppo despite an intensifying government siege to rid the area of opposition fighters, leading some to assume that the family supported the rebels. When their house was destroyed, Mr. Daqneesh refused assistance and would not speak to the media. Some residents said he simply did not need the money. Others said he supported the government and did not want his son to be an opposition poster child.

Many families stayed in the rebel-held half of the city, despite the risk of airstrikes, some to support the rebel cause, others to protect their property.

“I stayed in Syria. This is my country, where I grew up and lived and my children will grow up in it,” Mr. Daqneesh said in another interview that was broadcast Monday. He also criticized the opposition fighting to oust Mr. Assad. “They are the ones who hurt us and our country and displaced the people,” he said.

New video of Omran Daqneesh, the Syrian boy who became a symbol of war-torn Aleppo.CreditVideo by شبكة الأعلام الوطني nnn.syria2016

Syrians appearing on state television or on channels associated with the Assad government are not able to speak freely. The government exerts tight control over all information broadcast about the war, including interviews with civilians, who can be coerced and threatened with arrest if they criticize the government.

Speaking to a pro-government news outlet in Aleppo, Mr. Daqneesh recounted the night of the attack. At the time, rescue workers who responded to the airstrike told The New York Times that one of his sons, 10-year-old Ali, had died. But Mr. Daqneesh never mentioned it in any of his television appearances this week.

He did describe the sudden nature of the “strike” — as Mr. Daqneesh called it — that sent him scrambling to rescue his children. He said he first found Omran and carried him to safety before returning to search for his other children and his wife.

Mr. Daqneesh did not say who was behind the attack, but he said he did not hear planes overhead before his house was shaken. Emergency medical workers and local journalists said at the time that the family’s house was hit by Syrian government or Russian airstrikes.

Volunteer emergency responders, known as the White Helmets, arrived shortly after the home was hit and helped evacuate the family, Mr. Daqneesh said.

”They took Omran, got him to the ambulance, where they filmed him,” Mr. Daqneesh said. “It was against my will. I was still upstairs in the house.”

Mr. Daqneesh said he was pressured by opposition activists after Omran was released from the hospital to “talk against the Syrian regime and the state,” adding that he had been offered money to do so, which he refused.

Supporters of the government and opposition activists have been quick to accuse each other of using Omran to further their own agenda.

Last year, after the images of Omran galvanized international attention around the plight of besieged civilians in Aleppo, Mr. Assad told Swiss television he thought the whole incident was a hoax — “part of the publicity of those White Helmets.”

“This is a forged picture, not a real one,” Mr. Assad said at the time.

Now, Mr. Assad is using Omran and his family, who are living in an area controlled by government forces, to endorse his view of the war and discredit the opposition.

In several of the interviews broadcast this week, Mr. Daqneesh claimed it was the rebels who had tried to intimidate him.

“They wanted to use his photo and use him,” Mr. Daqneesh said, adding that armed men also threatened to kidnap Omran.

Mousa Alomar, a pro-opposition journalist, said in a recent video that he had delivered a donation to Mr. Daqneesh, and asked if Omran could be filmed, but the father had declined.

“Omran’s father said, ‘No, I don’t need the money and I don’t want my child to be on cameras,’” Abdelkafi al-Hamdo, an anti-government activist who fled Aleppo in December, said in a WhatsApp group message. “But can Omran’s father say no to the regime?”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Syrian Boy Who Became Symbol of War Reappears in Interviews. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe